For over 90% of owners dealing in property investment, maintenance is high on the list of biggest time commitments and biggest headaches. Not only is handling maintenance a distraction, but emergency situations can directly hit the bottom line if they lead to property damage.
Dealing with tenant calls, scheduling work appointments, and handling emergency issues adds up. Luckily, there is a way to take it off your plate and still be able to rest easy knowing that your tenants are happy and your property is staying in top condition.
Latchel is a proptech startup used in over 42,000 units nationwide. Property managers and landlords are using it to offload all of their maintenance, so they can focus on more important things, like growing their portfolio or simply spending more time away from the phones and with family. It began when co founder and COO of Latchel, Will Gordon, inherited his grandfather’s property management portfolio while he was still working full time at Amazon. He quickly realized how much time maintenance took away and how much of a headache in brought in. So, he decided to call up now CEO, Ethan Lieber, to build a tech forward solution.
How is it done?
The first step to never taking a maintenance request again is to never take a tenant call again. Latchel takes all those. Client’s get a dedicated Latchel phone line to give to tenants. Tenants call that line for all their maintenance requests. You never have to be on-call again – no more late night calls, no more weekend disruptions.
What’s step 2? Get a team of experienced technicians on the phone with your tenant to troubleshoot the issue. Latchel does that when your tenant calls in. They have a team of former property managers and maintenance techs on the phone with your tenant to do a comprehensive deep dive on their maintenance issue. In many cases they are able to fix the problem on the phone and save you money by avoiding dispatching a contractor, which can be very costly at odd hours. Latchel even gives a real life preview of their maintenance troubleshooting if you’re curious in trying it out. What happens if Latchel can’t troubleshoot and you’ve got an overflowing toilet at the apartment?
Go to step 3. Latchel troubleshooters will dispatch one of your favorite contractors to get the issue fixed. If you don’t have contractors in your rolodex, Latchel is armed with a national network of vetted contractors and handymen. Their troubleshooters will get someone out to the apartment within 2 hours for emergency situations and get the maintenance problem fixed.
But seriously, never deal with maintenance again?
Never touching a maintenance problem shouldn’t be your long term goal. You still need to be making important executive decisions related to your property. However, when it comes to building wealth with your investments and freeing up your time and stress capacities, you should only be focused on the “executive” decisions. Get the nitty gritty off your plate, and keep your focus on the impactful things. It can be stressful to offload and lose a sense of control over your property or properties, but through Latchel’s portal you’ll still get full visibility into all work orders that are coming through and stay in constant contact with the team. Latchel also has a $1,000,000 insurance policy to keep your investments protected.
Keep Your Tenants Happy
In a recent article on the 2019 trends to watch in property management, its noted that renters will always want the tried-and-true basics. One of the bigger ones being a responsive and efficient maintenance team. If you’ve ever been a renter yourself, you could probably agree. When tenants are happier, they tend to stay longer, also reducing time spent on turnover and tenant screening.
Across all tenant reviews Latchel has been able to maintain a 4.7 out of 5 star rating for tenant satisfaction, by being utterly customer obsessed, which is one of their leadership principles.
To learn more visit www.latchel.com
Aaron DiCaprio is the CEO and Co-Founder of Rent Rescue which provides rent default insurance that reimburses owners their lost rent and legal expenses when a tenenat defaults on their lease. Aaron can be reached at aaron@rentrescue.com.
Comments(0)